


Mourning Breaks

by DJFero



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Ice skating with a ghost brother, Jack you're so good at this, even when you're not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/635075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJFero/pseuds/DJFero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after rising from the frozen pond, Jack Frost worries about a girl from the nearby town who just won't enjoy the winter fun and games with the other kids. He's determined to get her into the spirit of the season, to help her forget.</p><p>They say she lost her brother last year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning Breaks

It's been a year.  
  
It's been one, whole year of solitude.  
  
One year of shouting at the people milling about the village, of screaming at the top of his lungs directly in front of their blissfully ignorant faces,  _please just_ look _at me, please,_ please _!_  One year of swearing and raging at the silent and stoic Man in the Moon, of punching at the air and clawing at the sky, pulling at his own snowy hair and roaring until his throat is torn and his voice hoarse or even long gone,  _why fucking_ me? _Why does it have to be me, what am I supposed to be_ doing _and why do I have to do it_ alone _?!_  
  
It's been a year of sitting on snowdrifts and staring dejectedly at the daily chores getting done, the market bustling, the children playing, the adults laughing. It's been a year of watching presents passed at Christmas and flowers and love tokens on Valentine's, blood-red Easter eggs hunted in the spring, woven witches' ladders and children peeking around for fae folk at the summer solstice, the whole town feasting together under a harvest moon in autumn, the bonfires on Samhain. And none of it for him.  
  
After a year, Jack Frost doesn't think he's quite done grieving for himself. He's not sure why he feels like he's in mourning because he hasn't _lost_  something in so far as he's aware. But he knows what he's missing. He sees it day by day in the interactions of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and friends. He sees what it is to talk, to be heard, to be loved, to be  _seen_. He sees it, but in a year since his birth, he's never been gifted the pleasure of any of these things.  
  
Of course, Jack's experienced things none of the townsfolk have, and in the quiet hours of the lonely nights he has  _that_ , if only that, to comfort him. Once he got the hang of flying he turned out to be a natural. He's flitted in amongst birds coming or going from migration, and he's napped upon clouds and danced upon moonbeams on their way down to protect the sleeping children. He's discovered a new art form, mastered the technique of blowing his icy breath across muddy puddles or the glassy surface of his pond and creating mosaics of curling frost. He's not sure where he remembers it from, but he's even recreated a lithograph seen in his mind's eye of an Italian lady with a mysterious smile whose name he cannot recall. He knows only that her smile is famous, and he felt a surge of pride when he carved it out perfectly in frost over a small pool of rainwater, and thought  _I bet your artist never painted you like this._  
  
He's done other things, too. He's frozen dozens of arrogant children's tongues to iron plowshares, he's nipped a hundred noses, he's flipped twice so many skirts with sudden icy breezes. He's conjured sleet at the tips of his fingers, blizzards with a twirl of his crook. Once or twice, for fun or out of mercy or maybe just to get some attention, he covered the wooden schoolhouse entirely in snow, walls of it six feet deep piled against the doors.  
  
But through it all he's been invisible, inaudible, untouchable. He'd trade all of his fun and games, all of his frost and snow, even the wind that tosses him into the blue skies...  
  
... for just a bit of companionship.  
  
After a year he's not done grieving, but he does his best not to pity himself. It's harder some days than others, but now the winter's come back, and the children are at play, and, well, he might as well have some fun, right? He might as well smile and laugh and play with them, because as deeply as it pains him that they don't see or hear there is an innocent, pure, perfect thing in their winter games. His heart feels a little less iced-over and frostbitten when he stands at the center of it all, directing the joyous chaos with his crook like a conductor's baton. Their laughter and their squeals of excitement fill his head and that hollow in his chest until, for at least a little while, all the sorrow is crushed under a happy flood.  
  
But there is one girl who won't play.  
  
He's seen her around town doing chores for her parents, or helping set up the holiday festivities with an earnest dedication. He's seen her go to school, and sit and talk with friends, though she rarely seems to have the energy or the wherewithal to play with them, her smile slightly strained.  
  
He's been worried about her since he noticed this behavior back around Easter; he'd been impressed by her maturity as she'd guided the smaller children in finding the eggs hidden around town, and as she stopped to nurse booboos garnered from roughhousing and racing to get those eggs. She herself never participated. She watched quietly and helped as she was prone to helping, all with a smile when someone was watching her and a thousand-mile forlorn stare when they weren't (except, of course, for Jack). He'd hoped that with time she'd regain her zest for life but so far it hasn't happened, and as the year has worn on he's grown more concerned. He's managed to learn from the pitying whispers of likewise worried adults why she broods (constantly, but internally, putting on a strong face and smiling even though her lack of true joy is as telling as the tears she doesn't shed).  
  
He can't really blame her for her sorrow. They say she lost her big brother last winter. Jack doesn't know who he was or how he died -- only that it was an accident, and that he died saving his sister.

'He was a hero' the adults say when they need some comfort.  
  
'He was so young' they say when the grief weighs heavy on their hearts.  
  
'He was so reckless' they say when the justified anger weighs heavier.  
  
'He was so special' is writ across every feature of the sister that outlived him, and the way Jack sees it the boy should never have put her at risk in the first place. He should never have put himself at risk when she loved him so much. He should never have made her see him die because it's killing her, too.  
  
She's a wonderful girl and Jack is certain she was a wonderful sister. And she deserved a better brother.  
  
If he were to hate anyone, Jack might hate Pippa Overland's late brother.  
  
Today he finds her sitting atop a pile of firewood just outside the front door of her parents' warm, inviting cottage, her hands and face still smudged with dirt and dust and ash from the housework she does faithfully without being told. As if hard work is a balm for the grief she's scrubbed every nook and cranny of the house, scraped every speck of ash from the hearth, washed sheets and hung them to dry by the fire lest they freeze in the wintry air. She's fed the pigs and the chickens, rounded up the eggs, brought in the firewood for this evening. Her parents couldn't find chores for themselves if they tried.  
  
Now, taking a rare break, she slowly turns the pages of a school book. Jack sits beside her and watches for a while, chin propped in his hands. Her eyes stare hard at the words, but now and then they go unfocused and turn their gaze inward toward some pained interior story Jack isn't privy to. When she notices she blinks and redoubles her efforts, scribbling notes furiously.  
  
Jack decides she needs a distraction from her sorrow, and schoolwork definitely isn't doing it. Making up his mind he hops smartly to his feet, turning to give her a mock-stern look with one hand on his hip, the other propping his crook up at a jaunty angle. The show is lost on her of course, but for a moment he chooses not to be bothered by that. He hops back several feet and blows across his palm, rolling a snowball into his pale hand.  
  
Pippa looks up in annoyance a moment later, the spattered remains of the snowball dripping down her cinnamon hair; Jack holds his breath as he watches a dance of blue sparks limning her wide eyes, each speck shaped like a snowflake and luminescent like a firefly. He doesn't know what to call the magic inherent in his snow but he knows its effects, the giddy laughter, the sudden burst of glee and excitement. He waits...  
  
"Who threw that?" Pippa asks, her voice a ragged sigh. The handful of children nearest her cease their play and look to her, confused and shrugging. She throws up a hand in exasperation and returns to her work.  
  
"Whoa now!" Jack cries, leaning over her shoulder. "That's not the idea  _at all!_ You're supposed to throw one back, for heaven's sake. Don't you know the _unwritten rules of snowball fights?_ "  
  
She doesn't respond, but he didn't really expect her to.  
  
Trying a new tactic, he draws the cold in his icy body to the points of finger and thumb and tweaks her button nose, giving her a little nip. His digits pass through and leave a blue after-image across her skin for one tiny blink of time, but she feels the cold if not the fingers that were holding it and rubs her nose in annoyance. Her eyes never leave her page.  
  
Jack's had about enough of this; he gives his crook a smart twirl and swings it, arcing a swoop of wind across her lap and sending her book flying away.  
  
Pippa squawks in surprise and is on her feet in an instant, chasing the wayward book down.  
  
"Not today!" Jack crows, and he lifts the book again, high above her head. "You stay away from that book, young lady. There'll be plenty of time for  _work_  when you finish your  _plaaay!_ " The last word trails off into laughter as he makes his point by dancing her book higher and higher on the wind, higher than it ought to go. He carries it off and away to land, at last, on the peaked roof of the schoolhouse. Feeling devious, he manages to land it on exactly the page she was reading.

Jack settles as lightly as the first snowfall onto a bare sycamore branch and leans against a bough, cocking his shepherd's crook at his side and grinning down at the girl. Pippa stares up at her lost school book...   
And stares.  
  
And stares.  
  
Jack feels his smile grow tight across his face, a prelude to falling away all together. She's supposed to just-- to just  _stop working_  for a minute, to be amused by his antics enough to be inspired for more fun.  
  
Instead, she just stares forlornly up at the book he ripped away as if it was the one thing holding her brittle world together.  
  
Then she does the worst possible thing, the exact opposite of what she's supposed to do:  
  
She drops to her knees and cries.  
  
Jack is startled from his perch and falls flabbergasted to the earth at the sound of great, heaving, wet sobs that rush out of the skinny little girl like torrents of saltwater set loose by a broken dam. He rushes to her, even though it puts him at the head of a small mob of children and a couple of adults hurrying to do the same. In the end, they pass unwittingly (inconsiderately) through him.  
  
Pippa is on her feet before they reach her, though, pushing past their gentle touches and sympathetic words. She bolts toward the trees and into the forest beyond, scattering quick-freezing tears over the snow the whole way.  
  
"What brought that on?" comes a hushed whisper.  
  
"Should we...?" a child asks uncertainly.  
  
"No, no, leave her be," says the gentle if harried-looking young man Jack recognizes as the teacher, adjusting his pince nez. "It's just a rough time of year for her; her brother's death -- God rest his soul -- no doubt ruined winter for the rest of her life, the poor dear."  
  
The words aren't all the way out of the man's mouth before Jack has caught a breeze, whipping off with a crack like frost-wreathed autumn leaves, because there's simply no bloody way he can let that stand.  
  
He finds her at his pond, oddly enough, or near it; she's crouched in the snow under a naked oak and weeping brokenly, her eyes fixed on the thin coating of frost over the still water. Jack leans against the tree near her, following her gaze.  
  
"Why did you do it?" It's barely more than a whisper. Jack looks down to the girl, to the train of cotton-soft white puffs of steam that follow each huff and sob, and the tracks of hot tears down her cold-ruddied face. "It should have been _me_..."  
  
"Hey, now, don't talk like that," Jack chides, brow furrowing at the pang in his chest. "You just-- You don't get to switch with the people you lost, much as you want to." He thinks to what little he knows of the tale of her brother's death: a sister in peril, a brother who pulled her to safety only to fall victim to the same sad end that was meant for her. "I guess  _he_  did," he concedes, smiling faintly, "at the last second, and I bet he wouldn't trade back for all the world."  
  
Pippa buries her face in her knees and cries harder, and Jack knows it's not because of him but her timing couldn't make him feel more guilty. "Why did you leave me?" The sentence takes a heart-rending eternity to form amidst hiccups and gasps that wrack her entire body and interrupt her on every other syllable.  
  
Jack sighs and peers around for some ideas, something he can do that won't make it even  _worse_.  
  
Hanging from branch above, alone and out of place like a single rose on an overgrown grave, is a pair of ice skates tied together.  
  
Jack looks between the skates and Pippa, squinting to judge... yes --  _yes!_  -- they'll fit her if only just. She's grown since last winter, enough that he's sure the skates would have been a less snug fit back then, and the coincidence doesn't strike him as odd for a moment. He's too swept up in the serendipity of it all. Jack flits high and unties the laces, dropping the skates to the powdery snow before the girl.  
  
Pippa stares at the skates, still trembling with sobs, and hesitantly picks them up.  
  
But Jack's not done. He hops, skips, and leaps to the smooth, glassy surface of the pond, which looks like white lace on black velvet from the dusting of frost gathering at its edges. That lace weaves inward, and deeper, until the whole pond is coated with thick, clean, solid, white, wonderful ice.  
  
"J--"  
  
He pauses, bare feet skidding to a stop at the dead center of the pond, and turns his beatific smile back on Pippa --  
  
"J-Jack?"  
  
\-- excited to see her reac... tion...  
  
Jack freezes for want of a better way to put it, and it seems as if she's looking right at him,  _right at him--_  
  
"Jackson?" she breathes with a little more conviction.  
  
Jackson?  
  
Oh.  
  
 _Jackson Overland_ , he guesses.  
  
Her brother's name must have been Jackson.  
  
She means Jackson Overland.  
  
Not Jack Frost.

It hurts somewhere deep, but... but maybe she needs Jackson Overland's post-humous offer of comfort more than she needs Jack Frost. He hopes Jackson Overland -- the devil take his soul -- won't take offense to Jack putting words in his mouth for a bit, so to speak.  
  
He flutters back to her and notes with an even sharper pain that her eyes are still fixed where he was standing, not following him. He brushes it aside, though, just as he brushes aside the sorrow in what he must do, bracing himself with teeth clenched tightly over his lower lip. He drops flat on his back on the ground beneath her, passing through her with a twist in his guts, and he fans his arms and legs quickly through the snow before hopping up again.  
  
When he stands, she's sitting in the center of a perfect snow angel.  
  
Pippa stares all around her, clutching the skates to her chest, and sobs anew. For one awful moment Jack thinks he  _has_  made everything worse, but then like dawn breaking in bands of gold and red over sparkling snow she slowly smiles through her tears.  
  
Progress.  
  
Jack crows elatedly at the small victory, backflipping over a breeze and landing on the frozen pond. "Come on, then, Pippa!" he shouts, and skids hard along the curve of bank nearest her to send up a spray of snow that makes her eyes widen with wonder. "Skate with me!"  
  
Pippa laughs, then. It's like the familiar chirrup of the cardinals greeting the season, that laugh, and it has him laughing too, tracing the perimeter of the pond as she hurriedly tugs on her skates. Her good cheer is reigned in a bit when she wobbles up to the ice, though, looking skeptically at its surface. She wipes her tears away with one bare hand and glances out again at the center of the pond.  
  
"Jack... you won't let me fall in, will you?"  
  
Pippa looks around, realizing the dangers of skating out here alone; Jack reaches unthinkingly for her hands, but clasps his own to his chest when they pass right through. Instead, he nips her nose, smiling. "You're not gonna fall," he whispers, even though he knows his voice will be carried away in the ether that separates them. "We're gonna have a little fun instead."  
  
She smiles more strongly, seeming to have regained her courage, and it's almost as if she  _can_  hear him.  
  
Pippa takes her first careful step onto the ice, and Jack is beside her all the way.  
  
There's an easy rhythm to it, and it seems oddly  _familiar_. But even to Jack, who has nothing of his own to claim -- no past before the day he was born from this same pond --  _everything_  about winter is as familiar as his own body and blood; so it doesn't seem so strange that dancing across the ice with Pippa is as natural as if he's been doing it all his life. It must be familiar for her too, or maybe she's just caught up in the winter wonder like he is. Whatever the reason, somehow she always knows where to look for him, knows where her unseen skating partner ought to be.  
  
She's breathless from laughing, her cheeks red more from the happiness than the chill. It fills him up inside, like all the joy and fun and light and wonder in the world is wrapped up within her laugh and he's taking it in and in until he feels like he might burst.  
  
There's a snap and a crunch, and cracks begin spiderwebbing out from under Pippa's feet. She gasps, stops, looks down reflexively.  
  
Jack wishes she wouldn't look down. He wishes she'd just look at him.  
  
As it is, she's looking at the cracks when they vanish, the ice thickening and hardening properly where it had been just a little weak before. The hairline fractures close and heal, and the blemishes are smoothed over as easily as breathing.  
  
Pippa's eyes are full of tears again, and she doesn't resume skating like Jack wishes she would. Instead, she drops to her knees then and there, and he'd be worried, so worried, if she weren't smiling so very wide.  
  
She leans over, and whispers so low he almost doesn't hear: "I love you, Jack."  
  
Then she plants a tiny, snow-soft kiss -- and then another, and a third for good luck -- upon the glass-smooth ice, and he can feel its echo on his frost-limned cheek.  
  
He sits cross-legged before her, and watches her cry tears of a decidedly happy variety, giggling like a girl ought to be instead of sobbing.  
  
"Love you too, kid," he responds to words he's sure weren't meant for him, but he means every bit of it all the same.


End file.
